I rely on music enormously to express my feelings or to sustain me with pleasure during a long, hard day. I love small, temporary habits…[l]ike always eating at the same deli on Thursday nights while watching the same thing on the TV, listening to my i-pod, and reading Andrew Sullivan’s blog—that was one semester at about 4pm while I prepared to teach at 7. I love building in those little rituals.

My favorite was, for several semesters, coming home from the city, whether I had taught in Queens or New Jersey that day or just in Manhattan, I would travel back to the Bronx on the school van and every night I would listen to David Byrne and Brian Eno’s albumEverything That Happens Will Happen Today. And they say they wrote it as “secular gospel music” and boy does it work for me on that score. It was this meditative stuff, I would always start with the title track and I love the thought—everything that happens will happen today. Somewhere someone is going through everything and experiencing everything that ever happens.